e-Waste Refinery

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Funded by the NSF Stride Ventures Tech to Metal Transformation Challenge, EDAC is bringing a new approach to e‑waste that treats printed circuit boards not as hazardous trash, but as high‑grade ore for critical metals. Instead of burning away plastics and losing metals in slag, our system first strips out the organics in a low‑temperature catalytic step, turning mixed plastics into valuable co-products while preserving every metal in easy-to-extract forms. The cleaned, metal‑only fraction then flows into our hydrometallurgy platform, where electrochemically generated acids and bases dissolve and separate metals into multiple high‑value streams including copper, tin, battery materials, rare earth elements, and precious metals.

In a nod to circularity, the Electrosynthesizer continuously regenerates all of the acid and base chemicals that drive the process. EDAC delivers a pathway to domestic, low‑carbon, and scalable critical‑metal production from e‑waste rather than from new mines.

EDAC has pioneered a new material manufacturing process that inexpensively activates magnesium silicate rocks so that the CO2 in air or water can easily be captured and stored permanently.  This material will be used in surficial mineralization (capturing from air) or water alkalinity enhancement (capturing from ocean, river or wastewater). These processes create permanent carbon dioxide storage (1,000+ years) in an inert carbonate material. Surficial mineralization creates an aggregate for construction use.  Ocean alkalinity enhancement creates magnesium bicarbonate sediment and helps de-acidify water to help with animal and plant health.  

Additionally, EDAC will leverage its expertise in hydrometallurgy to remove nickel and other heavy metals from the material before it is used for carbon capture.  We'll sell these recovered metals into commodity markets to offset the cost of CDR.  EDAC is targeting sub-$100 per ton of CDR at scale.

They said it couldn’t be done. For decades, sodium silicate production has relied on high-heat processes and sodium carbonate, generating 2–4 tons of CO₂ for every ton produced and leaving a $10 billion global industry with a significant carbon footprint. EDAC has changed the game by discovering a carbon-free source of silicates: recycled glass. Readily available worldwide and at very low cost, recycled glass is now the foundation of EDAC’s breakthrough. We are the first company to successfully upcycle glass into technical-grade sodium silicate.

Powered by our proprietary Electrosynthesizer—the world’s lowest-cost technology for producing acid and base—EDAC is positioned to offer the lowest-cost, highest-quality sodium silicate on the market. Our sodium silicate serves a wide range of industries, including detergents, water treatment, construction materials, adhesives, and as a key precursor for amorphous silica used in tires, pharmaceuticals, toothpaste, coatings, colloidal silica, and silica gels. By combining innovative technology with sustainable sourcing, EDAC is redefining the future of sodium silicate with superior quality, lower costs, and a dramatically reduced carbon footprint.

EDAC Lab’s Electrosynthesizer will be available for sale to support a variety of applications, including mining, iron making, industrial waste recycling, wastewater treatment, and more. This solution is fundamentally modular, can be located on-site, and can generate the amount of acid and base needed for your application at about half the cost of chlor-alkali and without any hazardous emissions or waste. It can be modified to generate different acid/base pairs, for example sodium hydroxide and hydrochloric acid from sodium chloride, and sodium hydroxide and sulfuric acid from sodium sulfate. In some applications, brine can be recycled back to the Electrosynthesizer to save costs.